Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: Basic income guarantee - opinions&criticism welcome
by
kokojie
on 17/09/2012, 22:50:55 UTC
I think basic income guarantee is a must for all societies in the future. Imagine if all of our production/research is handled by robots, and even the maintenance of the robots are handled by other robots. Basically imagine there will be zero need for human labor in the society, how would humans enjoy the fruit of these advance of technology? You would need some kind of basic income guarantee, otherwise everyone would be unemployed and starve.

This is silly.  Even in such a society where robots can produce all wealth, a basic income would make no sense since everything would be basically free.

Also, if you think such a basic income would make sense in such a society (and it wouldn't), why would you like to create one in the current society, where robots do obviously not produce all wealth??

I wrote in an other thread that even in a post-scarcity, robot driven economy, a basic income would not solve anything because people would buy and sell their "income right".

I was wrong.

Now that I think about it, a post-scarcity economy is possible if and only if robots are capable of producing themselves, so that robots can own to everyone.  Post-scarcity economy must also mean that there is no scarcity of whatever provides post-scarcity, i.e. robots.  A bit like what we are starting to see with 3D-printers.

But when this happens, price of everything will drop like a rock and your idea of a basic income is just futile.

No it probably wouldn't be free, who determines how much "free" you get versus me? there will most definitely still be currency. In current society, robots(automated machines) already produce significant portion of wealth, why not start now? you think the switch would happen suddenly?